


Impressions

by Winterstar



Category: White Collar
Genre: Blood, M/M, Pain, vague sexual references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:24:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4181478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal has a taboo affliction which will change his relationship with Peter forever</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank [](http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/profile)[elrhiarhodan](http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/) for the original prompt which I really twisted around for this story. This is an answer to my Angst bingo card for Scars. Also thanks to [](http://rabidchild.livejournal.com/profile)[rabidchild](http://rabidchild.livejournal.com/) for always letting me bounce ideas off of her (while she's trying to write).

The heat of the explosion scorched his face as he cried out, as his life burst into flames and shattered around him. He watched as bits and pieces of it floated down around him like so many burning tongues of fire lapping at the air and consuming his soul. The only thing that grounded him, that kept him stable and sane had been the arms wrapped around him, holding him back from the conflagration, protecting him from himself.

Hours later as he sat in custody and he considered the journey which placed him back where he began, Neal felt the craving turn over in his belly, a knife twisted and jagged which carved out it place and he hissed against its betrayal. He vowed not to give into it, not then, not ever. He wouldn’t be one of those people, one of the outcasts. His hands shook and he sat on them to make it stop, to deny that reality had a way of playing ironic cards instead of logical ones.

If it was to happen, then it should have been Kate.

It wasn’t her, not even close.

He’d hoped that the curse, the illness, the weakness had skipped a generation. It was known to do that, but now he understood it didn’t happen. He had been cursed and he had only the prison walls and bars to save him from consummating it. He understands how it breaks down the fundamentals of his life; he knows it happened to his mother and father. He was told when he was eighteen the truth. He wished it away often enough.

Over the course of trying to find Kate’s killer, Neal shoved the longing, the need away. As a con-artist one of the skills you need to learn early in your career is the ability to compartmentalize. You have to make little boxes in a closet in your mind where truth and self and security lie. You never mix them up with the current con; you never open up those boxes unless you need to face the truth.

Neal hates facing the truth.

As he stares at the ugly welt on his arm that crawls up his shoulder and inches towards his face, he realizes he has no other choice but to open up those boxes, especially the one shoved deep into the corner of the closet. For now, he can conceal it but soon when the markings flourish and etch over his neck and face, he won’t be able to deny it.

It is a scar, a brand of who he really is.

He blanches and closes his eyes to lean against the small sink in his bathroom. He only feels the tiniest of pricks against his skin, like a heat rash and nothing more. The pain will escalate, he knows this, feels the churning in his gut as he bends over to throw water on his face.

He should have run when he had the chance, when the treasure was in his hands. Mozzie told him, he pointed it out so often. Stockholm Syndrome, indeed. If Mozzie only knew.

Yanking the towel from the ring, Neal dries his face and looks in the mirror. He knows the scarification will only continue, will get worse unless he accepts it, unless he reveals who he is. He cringes at the thought.

Even in a free society, reasonable men are not rational men. He laughs and it is hollow and open, now he’s quoting old conmen. If Peter knew the depths of his depravity, he’d be thrown in a hole without a door, in a pit or a well somewhere.

His kind are not accepted in civilized society.

He shivers and tries to pretend for one minute that it will go away. But it doesn’t, of course. He’s tried every other treatment and hocus pocus mumbo jumbo shit that’s out there. None of it works. Instead, he rifles through old files in the back of the closet and finds the card. It is for a healer. Maybe, just maybe he might be able to find something to halt its progress, to stop the transformation before it is complete.

There are ways to severe it; he knows this. He also knows what it did to his mother, how it drove her slowly insane. He slips the card in his pocket. At least today is Saturday and Monday is a holiday so he won’t need to face Peter until he figures out what the hell to do.

He finds himself in a strange part of Manhattan. He wouldn’t normally call it a questionable area, but lurking in the doorways and alleys are people who are made of the streets. The streets live in their bones and for good or sorrow they are linked to living out amongst the pulse of the city.

He goes through a back alley and ends up facing a crooked door with a window of wood. He knocks. At first there is no answer and he thinks the card might be out of date. The healer has long since moved on. People with his condition are not widely accepted. He still recalls the words used by Lauren during his first year on Peter’s leash. She turned her mouth in disgust and called ‘those people – those stalker people’ and rolled her eyes. It was the only time Neal noticed Peter didn’t reprimand one of his team for prejudicial or racial remarks. His gut still flips when he thinks of it, when he realized that Peter would never accept the truth of Neal Caffrey.

He decided to try one last time and knocks harder. The door swings open in mid-knock and a tall, lanky woman answers. She has long wavy gray hair and her face looks like a chewed up apple. Her eyes startle him because they glow in the dim light of the alley like cornflowers. She smiles at him and guides him into the cramped space.

The ceiling has beams in it and both of them have to duck in order to cross the room. She has a little table with winged cushioned chairs sitting next to it. There is a tea setting on the table and he recognizes the Bolivian China with its floral design in blues and pinks. It isn’t worth much now, but will be in the future since it hasn’t been made in twenty years or so.

She waves him to a seat and pours him tea. “I hope you like it; it is a particular brew I enjoy.” Her voice has a sing song quality to it, and he imagines in some far off past that the theater occupied her time.

He nods and accepts the delicate cup. It feels too frail, too small in his large hand. Her fingers are long and agile, she flicks the spoon and offers him sugar. He declines.

“Tell me what brings you here, Imprint.”

He recoils at the name but recovers and clears his throat to ask, “You’re a healer, right?”

“Been so for many years young man, now what is your ailment?” She glances over him and purses her fine pink lips. She has a certain regal presence that both intimidates and welcomes. “You haven’t accepted the imprint, yet?”

There isn’t any use denying it, especially since she already gleaned it somehow and he’s here for her help. He swallows down the bile forming a thick ball in his throat. “No, no I haven’t.”

“Why not? Are you stupid?” The sarcasm drips but isn’t meant to be rude; he can tell instantly as she places her teacup down and studies him.

“I can’t be that.” He forces the words out like he’s grinding granite against his teeth. He thinks of all the words, the slogans, the ugly things people say about it, his affliction. Some say it is a choice, other say it is a depravity, others say it is a form of retardation.

“Well, you are, you might want to accept it before you end up dead or worse,” she says and opens up a small cupboard near the narrow window. It is the only light in the place. She opens up a canister and offers him a sugar cookie. He refuses but she urges him. “Take a cookie; everything is better with a cookie.”

He takes it and munches on it. It slides down his throat like sand. The tea helps and its flavor like cinnamon soothes him.

“The imprint only has to be completed, right?” She glares at him, her cornflower eyes like brilliant fireworks in the night sky. “You feel the compulsion already with someone?”

“Yes,” he says but doesn’t look at her.

“Then what do you want me to do?”

He looks up at her then, standing over him, radiating both sympathy and something else. Her expression of sorrow tells him everything; she’s seen this before, some other Imprint wanting to deny his heritage. So he balls up his courage and throws it at her like a fist to the wind, “I need you to make it slow down, just until I can get some way to figure it out.”

“Who you’ve imprinted on doesn’t know?”

“No, he doesn’t.” Neal thinks of the moment he knew that the imprint was final, was permanent. He remembers Peter’s fist slamming against Keller’s jaw, drawing the slightest drop of blood. He’d felt the compulsion before, to bond and interlace his life with Peter’s from the moment Peter pulled him away from the plane wreckage. Yet, it had never been so strong, so permanent, so right. When Peter risked everything to save Neal – whom he should have hated and beaten himself, the curse flourished and locked onto Peter.

“So you think you can make him understand? Get him to accept you, because otherwise the pain from the scarification is going to kill you, you know.”

Neal nods. “I know.”

“Have the scars started?” She peers at him and he nods again, and then tugs the collar of his shirt away from his shoulder to reveal the lace of blisters along the ridge of his shoulder. The deep tissue wounds weep as his shirt is peeled away. “You need to get him to accept you soon; this will reach your face in just a few days.”

She leaves him and slips out into a hallway he’d only just realized existed next to the cupboard by her chair. It seemed really to be a recess than an actual hallway. In seconds she brings out a long fluted bottle that looks like an old fashioned Avon perfume bottle. His mother had those years ago. She sets it down on the small round table and pulls out the dropper.

“Come now, open up.”

“What is that?” He isn’t so sure he wants to drink something that some lady who thinks she’s a witch doctor or shaman or something concocted in her basement.

“It will help you last, but it will not save you,” she says and her focus bores into him like a driving wedge. “If you do not get him to accept your Imprint, that you are an Imprint creature and that your need trumps his revulsion of you, then you will die. I cannot save you.”

He keeps his hands folded in his lap; he keeps the glimmer and the patented Neal Caffrey charm at bay. There is no need for it, only truth and honesty and humiliation are present here. “I understand.”

“Then take it.”

He accepts the drop into his mouth and she feeds it to him like he is a baby bird fallen out of his nest with no one to care for him but some stranger. The chill passes over him as the acidic taste fills his mouth. It slithers down his throat as if it is a snake with a will of its own. It coils and twists in his stomach and he bends over as the cramps clench down tight.

“It’ll take a while to adjust.” She places the bottle on the table. “Take it twice a day and you might make it until Monday without dropping over dead.”

He clutches the bottle to his chest as he heaves in a breath and tries to steady his already shaking muscles. “How much?”

She considers him with a soft gaze and lifts his chin to see his eyes. “If he hasn’t already guessed who you really are, he’ll know soon enough. Tell him, tell him soon. The medicine is free, for now.”

She disappears into the recess again and he feels like an intruder. Fumbling to his feet, he makes it to the door and falls out into the alley. His eyes hurt and the stinging in his throat escalates. Staggering he finds his way back to June’s and although he spends the entire journey trying to organize a plan to tell Peter, nothing solidifies. He’s left open and empty of everything by the time he climbs the staircase to his apartment.

He swings open the door and makes it to the bed without a single coherent plan. He unseals the bottle, forgets the damned dropper and takes a swig of it. His eyes tear up at the taste and he seizes against the poison.

He feels the bite of the scars on his bicep and neck writhe as if a living creature. The thing inside of him has taken hold. He drops the bottle, trying to place it on the nightstand near the bed, but it slips and falls to crash on the floor, shattering into glittering pieces wet with his only salvation.

Collapsing back into the cushion of his pillows, he gauges how long he might have until the scarification becomes noticeable, until it starts to send him into shock, and kill him. He digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone. His vision is foggy at best and he dials by memory, pressing each key as a tone rather than by number.

“Mon frère this is not me.”

“Mozzie,” he manages to croak out. The elixir or whatever the hell it was burns his teeth, sets fire to his gums.

“Jesus, Neal, what the hell is going on?”

“I need you not to freak out,” he says as the pain rips through his shoulder only to be answered by the growing cramps in his gut.

In response to his groans, Mozzie curses and says, “Well, you’ve succeeded in freaking me out, so what would you like to do now, give me a heart attack?”

“Just come over,” Neal says. He doesn’t know why, he just needs someone here. He thinks about June but he doesn’t want June, he wants to say something to one of his closest friends before he succumbs to the thing that eats away his insides.

“On my way,” Mozzie says and the phone goes dead.

As he curls on the bed, the pain ratchets up a degree and the spindles of the scars inch around his throat to his scalp and his face. The medicine isn’t really working and he closes his eyes as he gulps back the fear. The old woman without a name, she was providing only a kindness, a false sense of hope. Maybe the stuff was supposed to knock him out or overwhelm him with the pain so that he would surrender and call out to his compulsion to bond.

He hauls the duvet over him and shudders as the chills of pain and longing overtake him. He thinks about his mother and her devotion to his father, a father who disappeared when he was only a child. She pretended he’d died, but now he knows the truth.

She had been an Imprint. A strange and horrible creation of Nature, a human being cursed with the need to singly bond to one person for all the days of their life. The compulsion drove every action and reaction. His father abandoned his mother when he couldn’t take her neediness. She never balanced her life out and Neal vowed not to be like her, to find equilibrium in his life. He didn’t want the wretched thing to be alive in him –he wanted to forget that part of his inheritance was the soul of an Imprint.

Now he has to come to terms with the idea of being an Imprint, one of society’s outcasts. It is a disease or a genetic defect or some kind of mutation. It is like being a leper. Only the depraved want some kind of submissive shit following them around like a fucking perverted duckling. There are some in society that see it as a choice, but he never picked to be this, he doesn’t want to be this way. When he considered the possibilities as a child, he thought he might just run away. Eventually he did, but it caught up with him.

He doesn’t know how he held it off with Kate.

Some scientists say it has to do with a pheromone trigger or some shit. But what the hell do they know? They don’t have to live with the pain and need and desire and yearning all the time. His hair is damp with sweat and he sits up to peel off the sodden shirt. Examining his arm and chest, he sees the long tendrils of the bruised skin, the welts. It looks like someone beat him with a whip but the beating has a distinct pattern to it. The longest line of the welts runs over his chest reaching down to his abdomen. This is faster than he thought it would be, and he wavers on the edge of control. He’s suppressed the need for so long, pushed it as hard as possible away from his awareness that once he acknowledge it, it burst free over him.

He tries to find some heat in the warmth of the duvet. The scars wrapping around his chest claw into him and his muscles quiver in response. He breathes through the stabs of pain and lets it release. He learned years ago how to deal with pain that you cannot have treated. His muscles twitch under the pressure of the growing blisters. The welts slice open as he moves and leak out blood across June’s sheets. He should get up and get some old towels to cover the bed, he doesn’t want to lie here and die and ruin her 800 thread count sheets.

He groans as he struggles to sit up, the door whips open just as he climbs to stand near the bed. Mozzie stops stunned at Neal’s appearance. He drops the bag he was holding and continues to focus only on Neal. Neal watches as the puzzlement, the questions pass over Mozzie’s features, then understanding and a brief moment of revulsion, then acceptance.

He nearly falls to the floor when Mozzie braces himself, nods, and crosses the room to help him.

“Tell me what you need, or tell me I just walked into an unaired episode of the Twilight Zone.”

Neal chuckles and says, “I want to get some old towels to put on the bed. I don’t want to ruin June’s sheets.”

“You should be in the hospital,” Mozzie says but gently urges him to sit back down on the bed. “Though I do understand your loathing to not be in the system.”

“Moz, already in the system, went to prison, remember?” Neal says and rubs a hand over his flushed forehead. “But you’re right a hospital is definitely out.”

Mozzie does a step to the side, nods twice, and takes off for the bathroom. Though he’s trying Neal understands his hesitation. It isn’t every day you have to deal with the freaks, the taboo sect of society.

Mozzie returns faster than Neal assumed he would and he carries an arm load of towels, washcloths and some clean pajamas. He eases Neal to the side and folds the duvet back. After noticing the spots of blood on the sheets, he stops and glances at Neal once but continues his task. He places each towel and flattens it with his hands. Once he finishes with that work, he turns back to Neal who has begun to shiver again as if it is the middle of the winter when really is Spring.

With care Neal didn’t know Mozzie possessed, he dabs at the etched marking across Neal’s arms and chest. He cleans out the wounds and tries his best to not tear away at the blistered, nearly burnt skin.

His words come in low tones, and Neal realizes Mozzie is having a difficult time controlling his voice. He wonders if it is disgust or something else. “Can you tell me who?”

Neal looks away toward the balcony, but bites back the cries as the flesh peels away from his shoulder.

“There was a little kid at the foster home I grew up in, both his parents were Imprints, so everyone knew he was going to be one.” Mozzie shrugs. “He was a good kid, liked to read. He ran away after someone beat the crap out of him one time. Found him dead a few weeks later, there was writing all over his body.”

Neal glances at his friend and sees Mozzie has turned a putrid shade of green.

“Are you okay?”

Mozzie swallows and says, “I’m with the little guy, you know that Neal. Who else is going to fight the big corporations as they decide what’s right for us, what we should look like, who we should vote for, and what we should be? Damned pop slogans. Vroom Vroom be damned!”

“Okay, Moz, okay,” Neal says with a snicker. “I trust you.” The room floats about him and he sways a bit. “But I think I have to lie down.”

After Mozzie helps Neal change into the pajama bottoms but leaves the shirt to the side, Neal slides under the covers and sighs. He waits for a minute before he asks, “How long?”

“I noticed the first scar right after Keller.”

Mozzie pauses but then forges on. “So, can I assume?”

“Yes, it’s Peter.”

“Not good, in so many ways Neal. Could you take the Stockholm Syndrome to a new level, to the ultimate level? Really? Who would have thought that you could re-invent a psychosis?” Mozzie says as he goes to the wine rack. “I need a drink.”

“Take whatever you want,” Neal gasps as just shifting his chest to breathe scalds his flesh, causes new spears of pain to travel up and down his nerves.

“No I was thinking about something harder, like bourbon.”

Neal doesn’t reply but stares up at the blue sky about him, the skylight filters down and he smiles. He only has a few days left.

“Can I also assume?” Mozzie settles for one of his favorite reds.

“No, he doesn’t know,” Neal says.

“You do realize you’ll die if he doesn’t come?” Mozzie says.

“I know.”

“So why are we not calling in the Suit to save the day?” Mozzie asks then adds, “Mark this down as a red letter day in the annals of criminal history. Me, Mozzie, the famous Dentist of Detroit wants to call in the Suits to help.”

“He can’t help me, Mozzie, no one can-.” The rest of what he wants to say is devoured by the rising tide of pain, and he muffles a sob in the pillow as the nerves along his chest and his arm flare and burn.

Mozzie sets his glass on the table and pulls a chair over to the bed. “Mon frère I am not going to sit here and watch this. So, you’ll tell me what it takes to make it go away.”

“What do you think it takes? Everyone knows, it isn’t an urban legend.” The chills run up and down his spine and he closes his eyes.

“You imprint on someone and they have to kind of accept you, right?” Mozzie says. “How hard can that be? The suit looked the other way when it came to the treasure.”

Neal turns to look at Mozzie, grit scratches his eyes. “This is different Moz, you know that. He can’t be saddled to me for the rest of his life. I saw what it does to people; I saw how it tore my parents apart.”

“But your mother didn’t die after your dad left, right?”

“No, she didn’t.” Neal recalls the long nights when she would sit in the dark, rocking in the chair she used to lull him to sleep in. She would sit and a low long moan would follow with every swing of the chair. He doesn’t want to be that, he doesn’t want to turn into a shadow of himself.

“Is there another way?”

“I talked to a healer today,” Neal says. “She was fairly straight forward when she told me there wasn’t a cure for it.”

“But did you ask her if there was another way to complete the Imprint so you can continue to, you know, be on the leash without the Suit actually knowing you’re on the leash?”

He’s not sure he actually followed anything Mozzie just said because the long hell of pain clenches onto him and won’t let go. It feels like a dog’s jaws are clamped around his shoulder, tearing apart his throat, piercing into his heart muscle. It isn’t until Mozzie is over him with a cool cloth wiping his forehead that he knows he’s blacked out from the pain.

“Let me go talk to the healer again.”

Neal cannot persuade him to do otherwise; his talents have abandoned him. “In my pants pocket, her card.”

“You’re gonna be okay while I’m gone?”

Neal shifts under the duvet and whispers, “I’ll be here.”

As the daylight shifts and transforms the room to warmer darker shades, Neal waits and shudders through each breath. He cannot see making it to Monday. The certainty settles across him like mantle. He will be dead by tomorrow evening.

When he glances down to his chest he can see the work of the devil’s own hand, a hand print from hell draw in blood and peeling skin across his arm, his chest, his abdomen. He feels the faintest prickling crawling up his neck. His face will bear the scars of his identity like a tattoo of shame. At some point he must sleep because when he opens his eyes he glimpses Mozzie and the tall lanky healer standing in the middle of his apartment speaking in low voices.

The room is bathed in lights from the floor lamp and the lamp hanging over the dining table. He’s made it through the day; perhaps Sunday won’t be as bad. Mozzie ushers the healer to Neal’s bedside and she grimaces when she pulls back the duvet.

“Worse than I thought,” she says. “He won’t last twenty four hours; you have to get him to complete the Imprint.”

“Tildy, is there any way we could do it without said Imprintee actually knowing the imprinting was taking place.”

_Tildy?_

She cups a hand on his cheek and lifts his chin. Her actions are soft but firm. She means business but her eyes reflect kindness. “What has to be done is overt and will be obvious to the pair once they submit to the needs of the Imprinting process. The pheromones will take over. Sometimes it is just proximity, other times it is a simple touch, still other times it is a full relationship.”

She digs into the long pockets of her voluminous skirt. “This will help with the pain, at least a bit.” She slips her hand under his head and helps him to drink down a small sip. “The longer you wait, the higher the possibility that it won’t be reversible. As it is the scar on your shoulder will never completely fade.”

When Neal doesn’t reply, doesn’t defend his position but simply lays back and closes his eyes again, he hears her turn back to Mozzie. “I’m sorry, I wish I could do more.”

“Thank you for coming, so late at night.”

Neal cracks his eyes open and watches as the healer leans over and hugs Mozzie which is an odd thing, since Mozzie has never been a touchy feely kind of guy. Mozzie feeds him more of the drug and it keeps Neal in a half daze through the pain and the night.

When the morning comes, Neal isn’t quite sure since the day and night blend together into lights and grays. His breathing turns and pulls away at the lung tissue and he knows the scars run throughout his body now, not just the surface. He scans the room for Mozzie, but finds no one. He isn’t surprised but he is hurt. He’d hoped Mozzie would wait before he escaped one last time. Mozzie cannot face certain parts of life, death is one of them.

He crawls out of bed, landing on his hands and knees with a resounding thump. It ricochets up his spine and he hisses. Using the bed as leverage, he clambers to his feet. His legs hold him, though he wobbles and sways as he tries to cross the room. It becomes a bizarre game of tag as he bumps from one piece of furniture to the next trying to get to the bathroom. Finally, the weakness reduces him to grasping the wall, but he has no hand holds and he finds himself back on his hands and knees.

The exertion makes it impossible to breathe normally, and he takes to panting to try and fill his abused lungs. He coughs and spits the blood away, sending a silent apology to June. He enters the bathroom and manages somehow to piss without falling over. As he washes his hands, Neal avoids looking in the mirror. He doesn’t want to see what he already knows; the fingers of blisters are perched on his jawline, waiting to rip away at his flesh on his face.

He coughs again and this time it heaves up a clot of blood. Leaning over the sink, he hauls in a breath but it stings his sinuses and causes the pain to blossom anew. He grapples to free himself from the pain, but he succumbs to it, letting it take him in waves. The storm eventually eases and he throws water on his face and cringes as it hits the wounds on his neck.

This is no way to die. Perhaps he should consider the humane thing; perhaps he should just put himself out of his misery. He’s dying alone, with a damned tracker on his ankle, and borrowed clothes on his body. He has nothing.

He is only one of those people, not worthy of anything else, anything more.

Get a grip, he chides himself. This isn’t the man who scaled palace walls, who slipped in and out of the Louvre without anyone noticing, the man who walked right up to Special Agent Peter Burke and handed him a lollipop.

“No, it isn’t that man,” he says to no one.

He sorts himself out somehow, and remembers who Neal Caffrey was. His final con will be on himself, he’ll find a way to get through the rest of the time he has with some dignity. He makes his way to the hallway again and starts for the main room when he hears the door open.

“Neal?”

_Peter_

“Neal?”

_No, no, no._ He fumbles and clutches the glass door knob to the large walk in closet. He falls inside and staggers to his knees. The room spins around and he bites his lip not to cry out from the pain of sudden movement.

“Neal? Where are you?”

Shoving the large comforter stored in the corner of the closet aside, he hides behind it. _Let him leave, let him leave._

“He was here in bed, asleep, I swear it,” Mozzie says.

_Traitor_

“Do you think he left?” Peter asks. “Should I call up his tracking data?”

“Believe me, Suit, he was in no condition to leave,” Mozzie says.

Neal can hear the obvious sounds of a search. Doors are opened; he’s called again and again. Finally it quiets and he can imagine Peter standing in the middle of his apartment, hands on hips, puzzling out where he might be.

“Do you think he’s in another part of the house?”

“Anything could have happened, I shouldn’t have left him. He’s out of his mind,” Mozzie answers, the self-recrimination dripping in his words.

“Why don’t we-.” Peter stops. Neal can hear the creak of the floor boards answering Peter’s footsteps.

“What? Suit?”

“Blood,” Peter says. “Look.”

The trail of his own blood leads them to the closet. Neal stifles his breath, tries to hold it, and prays he didn’t leave a trail to where he’s concealed. He knows he’s being infantile, that it is only moments before they pull the large plastic bag with the comforter in it away from him to reveal his hidden spot. He doesn’t call out to them, he doesn’t say anything.

It is Peter who yanks the comforter away and finds him curled in a ball in the corner of the closet. He keeps his head turned away, his eyes closed. He cannot face Peter’s revulsion, not now, not ever.

“Damn it, Neal,” Peter says and reaches to touch him.

Neal jerks away from the touch, but it sends him on a spin toward spasms of pain again and he suffers through it until tears are streaming down his face. He doesn’t realize it until their hands are on him, but Peter enlists Mozzie to assist him. His legs can no longer bear his weight. He crumples as soon as they get him to his feet. Peter catches him before he hits the floor and both Mozzie and Peter guide him to the bed.

“He should be in a hospital,” Peter says. He hasn’t spoken a word to Neal other than a brief exclamation at his state. Neal understands, how could he say anything? He’s pulled the ultimate deception.

“A hospital can’t do anything for him,” Mozzie says. There is a brief silence as the room fades in and out of existence for Neal. He hears Mozzie speaking then. “Make me believe that there are good people in this world, Suit.”

The door closes and Neal struggles to open his eyes and sees only Peter hovering over him. For the first time, Neal studies Peter’s face, his expression, and his eyes. No revulsion or rejection just concern live there. Somehow, he wishes he’d confessed earlier so that maybe if he’d had a chance, he could have explored what it would be like to be connected to Peter for the rest of his life.

_Too late, now._

“Tell me, Neal,” Peter whispers. His hand cups the side of Neal’s head and Neal wonders if the blisters have marred his face yet. How ugly and unwanted he must be.

Neal uses all of his power to try and push Peter away, but he cannot even lift his hands anymore. His vision wavers on the edge of light and dark. He swallows and feels the blood pool at the back of his throat.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you trust me?” Peter says and there is something hollow and bleeding in his voice.

He can’t explain all of his insecurities, all of his fears. The majority can hardly understand the plight of the minority. He laughs a bit; he cannot believe he’s getting philosophical at the end of his life.

“No, not this way, Neal, never this way,” Peter says. In seconds Peter tears off his own jacket and yanks off his tie. “You are not going to die, not now.”

In the flow of the morning’s rays, Neal follows the ripples of time and light. He sees the room shift and become something new and different. He watches as his body transforms from something alive to something perched on the precipice. Peter is too late.

Peter never gives up.

Peter always finds him.

Hands are on him, holding him, cradling him against rough skin, against healthy skin. He isn’t sure what is happening or what Peter wants him to say, but he knows Peter is there for him. His fears fall away as Peter embraces him, kisses his forehead, and promises things he can never fulfill.

But he does.

Peter doesn’t lie.

Peter’s willingness is Neal’s undoing. As they lie together, as arms and legs entangle, Neal feels the shift in reality, the life he used to know cracks and fragments about him like shattered crystal. The Imprint solidifies into something within him he can access, into the tangible instead of the theoretical. He sees brightness and light collapse and all the shades and colors blend and mix to formulate a newly created world.

He gasps in a breath as the completion of the bond ripples through him. The world expands for an instant then constricts into a circle which not only encompasses him but Peter as well. He grasps Peter’s arms and shudders as the Imprint redefines him, aligns with Peter, and draws out his path, a path he will never walk alone again.

Peter never lets go, even when he screams and the pain bursts out.

Peter holds on and supports him, guiding him back to himself and to a new life.

The waves of the bonding Imprint sacrifices parts of him, rewrites his corners, not to change him but to enhance who he is. He suddenly understands that being an Imprint is something more, is an evolution of himself. He clings to Peter, and Peter tightens his grasp as they lay together.

Peter senses every need, every desire and follows him or leads him through the paths. He doesn’t leave Neal to struggle on his own, he doesn’t abandon him. He supports him and guides him. He lays down their new definition. Peter gives him everything he needs and more. He’s satiated as the night falls and the pain ebbs away.

He doesn’t wake up until the next day. His eyes are gritty and he realizes it is from crying. He sobbed when Peter accepted the Imprint, he remembers that much. The smell of eggs and toast wake him and he shifts to see Peter at the stove cooking.

He yawns and it doesn’t hurt his muscles and only tugs slightly at his skin. Glancing around he sees the sheets are a mess, stained with his blood. He frowns. He really didn’t want June to have to deal with that. He shuffles up in bed, but the room blackens for a moment and he swallows down the nausea.

Peter notices him. “Stay put, you’re still weak.”

Neal nods and feels a flush of red over his cheeks. How is he supposed to handle this new level of their relationship?

“How do you feel?” Peter says as he sets the plate on a tray and brings it over to Neal.

“Okay,” he ventures but doesn’t really want to consider the consequences.

“Drink the juice; you need the sugar and the fluids.” Peter looks around at the bed. “I’ll change the sheets in a bit, then we’ll pack a bag and you’ll come home with me.”

Neal gags on his toast. “What?”

Peter frowns at him and shakes his head. “You really don’t think I’m leaving you here? It’ll take days for you to heal and you need to be around me for that to happen.”

“How do you know about?” He cannot finish his sentence, he cannot finish his thoughts.

“I studied up on it when I was at Quantico,” Peter says. “Don’t you ever wonder why Lauren was transferred out of the White Collar unit?”

He doesn’t reply.

“Personally, Neal, I don’t ascribed to the idea people who are different are inferior,” Peter states. “I’m a little hurt you would think I would be like that.”

“No, I just-.” Neal has no excuse, just that his fear outweighed everything else.

“Eat,” Peter says and hands him the fork to eat his eggs.

It takes all of his energy to feed himself, and he wilts on the pillows of the bed but Peter ushers him off to the couch so he can clean the sheets. He lays down, a blanket tucked around him, Peter busy about the room. He watches and dozes for a while.

When he wakes Elizabeth is there and she’s watching him with bright clear eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he returns then adds, “I’m sorry. I never meant it to happen.”

Elizabeth considers him as Peter finishes packing a bag for him. She has a pile of his clothes in her lap. Her words are gentle but strong. “I know that, I also know that you don’t have a choice in the matter. We’ll figure this out together, all of us. I can’t say this makes me the happiest girl on the block, I need to adjust too, but we’ll get there. All three of us.” She peers over her should at her husband and Neal reddens since it is an intimate shared look.

“Now let’s get you cleaned up and back to our house.”

Getting to the bathroom is an experiment in endurance, but he makes it there with little assistance. The welts have receded a bit, but the water stings and by the time he’s washed the soap off his eyes are tearing freely. He gets out of the shower and clutches the sink again. Looking at his reflection, he sees the welts on his chest, his shoulder, his neck and there is one line on the outside ridge of his right cheek bone.

He knows the deepest ones will never completely disappear, but the newest ones will – to a degree. When he examines the one on his face, he hopes it will stay with him as a mark of who saved him after all. He dresses in solitude but realizes he’s not alone. He can feel the pulse and the breath of Peter even from a distance.

When they drive him home, he falls asleep again, but it is an easy relaxed doze that brings him peace.

THE END 


End file.
